Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
by Barcavolio
Summary: All the miserable people in this city... They can do nothing but watch and lie.
1. Funeral of a Friend

So I was listening to _Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge_ and I thought I could make a collection of Sweeney one-shots using lyrics from each song. Apart from the first one, they will (hopefully) be in the boundaries of the film. I'm doing the songs in chronological order, and you of the MCRmy will know which song I'm talking about. For the non-believers, the song title will be written in the afternote so you can go look it up on You Tube.

As I mentioned, this is AU coz I thought "Helena" described Sweeney pretty well but it's about a funeral. Now I must stop waffling.

Disclaimer: I have a huge poster of Sweeney above my bed which comes to life when you say "cabbage". But I don't own him.

2nd Disclaimer: My Chemical Romance and its songs belong to themselves. I wish I owned them, but I don't. LONG LIVE THE BLACK PARADE!

………

It was a bleak, ashen day on the day Nellie Lovett and Tobias Ragg stood in the dark, crowded graveyard for the funeral of someone whom Nellie had adored and Toby had always had his suspicions about. The sickness hadn't started that long ago, but now he was dead and on the twenty-fourth of April 1846 the funeral of Sweeney Todd took place in a forgotten churchyard in the middle of nowhere. Well, technically it was in London, but to Mrs Lovett it seemed like the end of the world.

If he'd been able to watch this, he'd probably laugh and laugh. Sweeney Todd had never been one for ceremony. If he'd been able to choose his death, he'd have taken Mrs Lovett and Toby with him.

_**Just like a match you strike to incinerate the lives of everyone you know.**_

She glanced to her right, where her adopted son stood stalwart and neutral. They were the only two people attending; no one else had known him well enough.

She didn't expect Toby to be sad. He'd been wary at slightly afraid around Todd. Sometimes she though she was the only person in the world who'd genuinely cry at his funeral. And she didn't know why she would. He'd never been particularly pleasant to her, snapping and yelling at her much too often to be simply temper. He'd trampled on her spirit.

_**And what's the worst you take from every heart you break?**_

She felt like he was standing behind her, wearing a scowl as he usually did. Although he'd been quiet and cold as the Channel at times, his presence stilled burned strong beyond the grave.

_**And like a blade you stain**_

When he'd been newly dead, she hadn't been able to see ahead through her anguish. But she could manage. She'd lived without him for fifteen years, she could do so again.

_**Well I've been holding on tonight.**_

After his pointless, empty speech that hadn't even entered into Nellie's brain, the priest politely asked her if she wanted to add anything. She shook her head.

_**What's the worst that I could say?**_

"He was a crazy man who murdered people but I loved him to death"? No, she'd watch his last minutes in the air in silence, painting a portrait of his face.

_**Things are better if I stay, so long and goodnight.**_

Though the day itself was unremarkable, it was the season for shooting-stars and she hoped she'd see one tonight. He was a lot like a shooting star; here and gone in a flash, but brighter in his time than anything else.

_**Came a time when every star fall brought you to tears again.**_

But cold. So cold.

Was his ghost watching today?

_**Can you hear me? Are you near me?**_

When her Albert had died, they'd written "We shall meet again in heaven" on his grave. Sweeney would have wanted them to write "We shall meet again in the fires of hell", no doubt.

C_**an we pretend? To leave and then we'll meet again**_

_**When both our cars collide.**_

………

Song: Helena.

Reviews: Yes please.


	2. The Murder Scene

Well, the second chapter is here! I loved your reviews, they made my day. Tell any Sweeney-obsessee you know on this site about this so they can R&R… it will make me happy!

This note must contain a special mention to Nellie Lovett 'Barker', who alerted, reviewed AND faved while it was only one chapter in the making. Amazing.

Disclaimer: THERE IS BLOOD FROM SWEENEY'S VICTIMS ON MY KEYBOARD! Or maybe it's the leaky red marker pen… what was the point of this paragraph again?

2nd Disclaimer: I could never write anything as amazing as MCR's songs.

………

Sweeney Todd watched Mrs Lovett and her shop hidden from their sight in the shadows of the doorway. It highly amused him that these people eating her pies with relish were completely unaware of the bloodstained pile of limbs down in the bakehouse, still less that one day they might end up there.

_**This is how we like to do it in the murder scene.**_

He found it strange that while people like Turpin sent countless men to their death and got away with it, he and Mrs Lovett would be hanged if their activities were discovered. Turpin's protection was the law and the defence that these were evil men; Sweeney and his partner killed men just as wicked, but it wasn't legal, and that was what made the difference between life and death.

_**Can we settle up the score?**_

Although it wasn't forbidden for him to be in her shop, he didn't like going there or being in the poublic eye at all. Their dull, stony eyes were animated with fear and horror whenever they saw him.

They didn't get scared of Mrs Lovett.

_**You're beautiful! Well I'm a total wreck and almost every day**_

Inside looked like chaos. Chaos also described Mrs Lovett rather well, so it shouldn't be surprising that her shop echoed her.

_**Like the firing squad or the mess you made.**_

She cared about her appearance, wasting lengthy amounts of time in the mornings doing her hair and picking a dress that she'd also wasted large amounts of money on.

It was worth it though. She liked to look respectable when she was shopping in the market or going out at all, and even Sweeney had to admit she looked especially attractive today.

_**Well don't I look pretty walking down the street in the best damn dress I own?**_

He yawned silently. He hadn't been getting much sleep lately, and kept waking up in the night, terrified by the shadows that plagued him.

_**If you were here I'd never have a fear**_

He didn't really care who it was, Lucy or Lovett, anyone who would keep the demons away.

He missed her. Them. Both of them. Strange really, when most of the time Mrs Lovett was insanely irritating and Lucy had been perfection itself. But it was getting harder and harder to remember how much of _her_ he actually remembered, and how much he'd made up inside his head.

_**So go on live your life, but I miss you more than I did yesterday.**_

She seemed to belong to a whole other world. Had London when they were young really been that happy, or had he just not noticed the misery?

_**You're so far away**_

Sweeney didn't know how much longer he'd be able to recollect anything about his Lucy before she faded utterly away and could well have never existed. How much long was he expected to remember?

_**So come on show me how, 'cause I mean this more than words can ever say.**_

He remembered something, some day…

…walking in the market with Lucy and Nellie, not buying much as they had such little money. They saw a tall, finely-dressed man pass through the stalls accompanied by a short, rat-faced man bearing a black cane. He stopped and talked quietly to the rat-faced one. Perhaps he was condemning yet another innocent man. But that was the way London worked: kill or be killed.

_**Some might say we are made from the sharpest things you say.**_

"Turpin 'n' Bamford," Nellie observed.

"What do you think they're looking for here?" Lucy wondered. "They're passing by that stall over there, but I can't imagine them having much use for flowers…"

Nellie narrowed her eyes at Turpin. "D'you think 'e wears a wig? Cause there's no way that's 'is natural 'air colour!"

The three of them snorted, not bothering to quieten the sound. Who cared if he heard them?

_**We are young and we don't care, your dreams and your hopeless hair.**_

Benjamin quickly sobered when he glanced towards Turpin and the Beadle again and saw Bamford violently beating an old beggar for failing to get out of their way. The laughter died as he realised how beautiful flowers and ugly weeds can coexist without you even noticing.

_**We never wanted it to be this way for all our lives.**_

A year and a half later, he was tried before the man whose hair they'd ridiculed and been sentenced mercilessly. He hadn't been allowed to defend himself, his lawyer was terrible and there was no trace of pity in the judge's eyes.

_**Do you care at all?**_

Sweeney Todd had the answer.

No. Turpin didn't care at all.

_**(Well there's no way I'm kissing that guy)**_

………

Song: Give 'Em Hell, Kid

Reviews make me hyper and happy.


	3. Marry Me

I'm sorry this has been so long coming, I've been really busy and then we I got some time to work in this I was stuck for inspiration. Um, yeah, not much else to say, just thanks for the reviews/faves/alerts and keep 'em coming! Really, the more people who review the happier I get and I think I write better too. So it's good… yeah.

Disclaimer: Seriously, my computer keyboard does look like Sweeney murdered someone over it, it's rather creepy.

2nd Disclaimer: My friend's hair when it wasn't put up looked like Ray Toro's, but now she's cut it short. Anyway, she had nothing to do with My Chem other than being a devoted fan ;D

………

Fitzwilliam Turpin's eyes roved over London as seen from his window. Although he lived in a pleasant area, London was a city where a street of beautiful mansions could back into tiny terraced decaying worker's houses. Irritating. This also meant that crime was just as abundant here than in the lowest, poorest parts of the city; one of the many reasons he told Johanna she couldn't go out of the house.

_**He calls the mansion not a house but a tomb.**_

One of his servants had caught a cold last week, and now everyone in his household seemed to be sniffing at the most inappropriate moments. Yet again, Turpin wished he could control people – or at least stop them coughing over his food. If it kept on he, the only unaffected person in the mansion, would catch it.

He'd be weak. And that was something he couldn't afford to be.

_**He's always choking from the stench and the fume.**_

He just hoped they'd get better soon. He couldn't get married to Johanna with his servants sneezing continuously. The idea!

_**The wedding party all collapsed in the room**_

The wedding had had to be postponed anyway because Johanna wasn't well. She was so delicate, always getting ill.

_**So send my resignation to the bride and the groom.**_

***

Bells were ringing. Bloody bells, always making a racket. Sweeney had a headache from the noise. Well, he'd actually had a headache before the bells started ringing, but it was a good tool for complaining. The ringing brought back horrible memories, too.

"Oh look! Weddin'." It was so typical of Mrs Lovett to state the obvious.

They both stood there, watching the party go past and down the street from the window. In a rare moment of acknowledging her presence he looked across at her and felt a surge of… something he couldn't quite describe. But just then, he wished that he'd listened to her drivel about _starting again_.

_**If you marry me, would you bury me? Would you carry me to the end?**_

Sweeney didn't like to admit it, but he'd be nothing without her. He liked to push her around and act like she depended on him, but really he depended on her. She could throw him out of the house anytime and he'd have nowhere to go, and end his days lying in the gutter.

She wouldn't do that though. She was too sentimental by half.

_**(Say goodbye) to the vows you take**_

Funny thing about her was, she was always telling him to move on from Lucy and Johanna and _she_ was still obsessed with Benjamin Barker. Despite this, she'd at least picked herself up and kept on living, which was more than he could say for Sweeney Todd.

_**(Say goodbye) to the life you make**_

Downtrodden, beaten, they'd both been broken over the years. Lord, sometimes he thought taking poison like Lucy was preferable to living in this filth.

_**(Say goodbye) to the hearts you break and all the cyanide you drank.**_

They both turned away from the window, Mrs Lovett sadly adjusting the photograph of Albert in the living room wall.

_**She keeps a picture of the body she lends.**_

"Look 'ow much money we made today, Mr T! Maybe we could take a holiday, y'know I'd love to get out of London…"

Rabbitting on and on about her pie-in-the-sky dreams. Haha, who'd want to eat _her_ pies if they knew what was in them?

_**Got nasty blisters from the money she spends.**_

"I jus' don't want to be stuck 'ere in London for ever, y'know? An' now we 'ave more money we can afford to escape…"

_**She's got a life of her own and it shows by the Benz she drives at 90 round the Barbies and Kens.**_

"Would you like that, love?"

He shrugged. Did it matter? "If you want. What about the shop?"

She laughed carelessly. "You don't 'ave to be responsible all the time dearie. It is possible to enjoy yourself once you get a 'proper job'!"

**_If you ever say "Never too late"_**

"Always wanting more than you've got," he muttered. Sweeney had meant to be quiet, but Lovett had picked up his comment anyway.

"An' what's wrong with that? Gotta aim high or you'll stay stuck at the bottom."

_**I'll forget all the diamonds you ate**_

His throat was dry and sore as he swallowed. He tried to get up from the chair, but darkness started to fizz at the edges of his vision, pixellating his sight as he swayed.

"Are you— Mr T, what's wrong?" Mrs Lovett demanded.

"Nothing," he murmured, hastily sitting back down.

_**Lost in coma and covered in cake**_

"Just 'ope you're not gettin' sick, heaven knows you don't eat enough as it is. 'Alf the time I feel like you'd die if I didn't force you to eat. Y'know, maybe I should get the doctor."

He scowled, told her sharply she was overreacting. Call the doctor indeed.

_**Increase the medication, share the vows at the wake.**_

She danced off, dreamy and increasingly annoying.

He was the one who'd first taught her to dance. They'd been twenty and nineteen, all four of them were invited to a ball and Nellie had gone into a fit because she'd never learnt to dance properly. So he'd spent endless evenings going through various dances, spinning round the small space with her, both of them laughing when she got the steps wrong.

There was no more laughter now. No more dances.

_**(Say goodbye) to the last parade **_

There was no use regretting. They'd both decided the way they'd live a long time ago. He still wistfully remembered the first time he'd seen Mrs Lovett, a lovely young woman of nineteen, with dark red curls bouncing round her face and her liquid brown eyes dark in her pale face. She'd been a dark graceful beauty next to fair, golden Lucy and it was only then had Benjamin understood the love painters had for the undead-looking girls he'd always found distasteful.

_**(Walk away) from the choice you made**_

Life was perfect then…

_Shut up,_ Sweeney told himself sternly. _Don't go into another of your trances, it's pathetic. Mrs Lovett was right, she always was. If I had any sense I'd've known that ages ago._

_But it's too late. When your daydreams become better than your life, you just end up staying there. Wish I could._

_Believe me, Nellie, I tried. I've tried to forget her but I can't. _

_**(Say goodbye) to the hearts you break and all the cyanide you drank.**_

_Lucy will stay with me_

_**To**_

_**The**_

_**End.**_

………

Song: To the End.

Reviews: PLEASE!


	4. Whatever Happened to Benjamin Barker?

Disclaimer: Sweeney Todd belongs to Tim Burton and Stephen Sondheim. THERE, I SAID IT.

2nd Disclaimer: My Chemical Romance don't know I'm using their songs in this fic. With any luck they never will.

………

Benjamin had often seen policemen apprehend criminals, but he'd always watched as an observer, witnessing it from the sidelines.

_**They say come with your hands raised high. Well they're never gonna get me.**_

When he looked back over the day he'd been arrested, the thing he remembered most about it was how out-of-place the incident was on that beautiful, gilded day.

_**And like a bullet through a flock of doves**_

The charge was killing a man, Mr Mooney who lived a few streets away. But even his wife had said to Lucy that he'd been most probably murdered by his stepbrother James. There had been no motive for Benjamin to kill the old man, and he'd never have killed him even if there had been. It was obvious – at least to him, Lucy, and the Lovetts who owned the house they rented – that the charge was pure invention.

**_To wage this war against your faith in me._**

There had been no witnesses, no evidence and a fair jury would have let him off at once. But there is no such thing as a fair jury, and under Fitzwilliam Turpin's sway they all said he was guilty.

Judge Turpin declared that he was going to be "merciful" and "spare your life". Instead of a hanging, what young Benjamin Barker got seemed better but was worse than a death sentence:

Transportation to Australia.

_**Your life will never be the same.**_

The ship looked like a joke. A hulking old thing, she looked like she was ready to break into pieces, but, decrepit as she was, she would take the convicted men and women on the long journey to Australia.

Benjamin was startled to find someone he knew on the ship – Henry Davies, whom he'd shaved countless times in his shop on Fleet Street and was the most unlikely person to end up on a convict ship he could think of.

_**And I don't know how we're just two men as God had made us.**_

The voyage seemed to last for ever, a nightmare of dark, damp, not enough food and terror. When they finally came into the harbour on Australia's coast, Benjamin wished he could stay on the ship.

_**Too much, too late, or just not enough of this.**_

The last time he'd seen Lucy, she'd been crying uncontrollably and shaking like a leaf.

_**Pain in my heart for your dying wish. I'll kiss your lips again.**_

The land and work itself was a nightmare, and the other convicts, a lot of whom were genuine criminals, scared him out of his wits. "Once a murderer, always a murderer"?

_**Well they all cheat at cards and the checkers are lost.**_

He hadn't thought anyone would be stupid enough to include prostitutes and murderers in the same work groups, but apparently they were. One more recipe for disaster.

_**My cellmate's a killer, they make me do push-ups in drag.**_

After three gruelling months in the colony, he didn't feel like himself. To survive, he'd blanked out everything about Lucy, Johanna, home… and concentrated instead on the hell he was in.

_**Well nobody cares if you're losing yourself. Am I losing myself?**_

The worst part was building roads. He was useless at it, and their driver was extremely free with the whip, so his body was always covered in half-healed wounds. Every time anyone yelled at him by name, Benjamin was scared that he was doing something wrong, which he was most of the time, and he became prepared for the lashing he inevitably got.

But there were worse punishments than the whip out on Devil's Island.

_**Will they give me the chair? Or lethal injection or swing from a rope if you dare.**_

Benjamin Barker (or whatever was left of him) watched motionless as yet another ship drew into the harbour. Some of the convicts on board would have been unfairly convicted, ripped from their lives. Like he was.

He wondered how long it would take them to realise normal rules didn't apply out here. Here you had to forget everything you'd been taught, forget the moral values people repetitively drilled into your young mind.

Look at him; he didn't recognise himself as Benjamin any more.

_**Oh, nobody knows all the trouble I've seen.**_

One day he'd been sullenly shifting rocks away from the path – the result of a landslide that had occurred there earlier – when something snapped, and he decided that he didn't want to live like this. He'd been living in a daze for so long, and know he'd properly wiped away the last blurriness from his eyes. He stepped away from the rubble and sat down in the dust.

"Barker!" The name whipped through the air sharply.

He raised his head. "Mm?"

The overseer glared at him. "Get up and start doing something useful." Benjamin scowled back. "No, make me."

"Now, Barker!" He didn't move.

_**Now, but I can't.**_

He got the usual punishment, and though it hadn't made any difference, at least he felt better. The despairing faces of the damned had stared sadly at him. Even though many of the criminals here were genuine criminals, they weren't – well, not all – monsters.

_**And I don't know how we're just two men as God had made us.**_

His fists clenched.

_I can't take this any more. I've got to get away._

_**Well I can't, well I can!**_

The colony wasn't heavily guarded. Though it may have been hell, escape meant only certain death, either by the sea on one side or the desert on another. But by this point, Benjamin – or the man formerly known as Benjamin – didn't care. Anywhere was better than this.

_And I might see Lucy again…_

_**Pain in my heart for your dying wish. I'll kiss your lips again.**_

Desperate as he might be, he didn't have a deathwish. His sentence had been fifteen years. In two months, that would be completed, and maybe they'd let him go back on the next ship. He tried to remember what had happened to convicts before, but he couldn't recall anything.

When he was finally sure his sentence was over, he asked the overseer in charge what happened once you'd served your sentence, and if you were free to go back, but he was answered with a laugh and the declaration, "No one goes back. Once you're dumped here, you're here 'til you die."

That was it then. He'd have to find his own way out.

_**What they ask of you, they'll make you want to say, "So long, well I don't remember, why remember you?"**_

Three nights later, he was pacing furiously through the harbour, trying to find a small boat that he could steer by himself. At last he found one – a small topper, one sail and a tiller. It seemed very fragile, but he couldn't operate the bigger boats alone.

He pushed the dinghy out into the midnight waters and leapt in.

**_Do you have the keys to this hotel? 'Cause I'm gonna string this motherfucker on fire!_**

………

Song: You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison.

Please give me feedback, otherwise I feel like nobody is reading this and my efforts are going unnoticed (I'm not so good with the writing relevant stuff to go with the lyrics and it making sense thing!).

My knowledge of Australian convict colonies is sketchy at best, so please forgive the vagueness. I did try to research this but it wasn't very useful. I've also no clue what a one-sail boat would have been called in the Victorian era, so I used the modern term. What I do know is that they're murder to steer properly because you keep capsizing them (it's fun at first… but then you get cold), so I don't envy Sweeney…


	5. You Wear Me Out

Hi muffins! The pressures of school of slightly delayed this chapter, but no worries!

Today I got the 'making of' book of Sweeney Todd, which I totally recommend to anyone – I snapped it up for £2, bargain! It's great in understanding the characters and for general stuff, I love it =D

Disclaimer: I could buy as much Sweeney stuff as I could lay hands on, but it still wouldn't be mine… sob…

2nd Disclaimer: All songs being used without permission. If the band knew how I'd mutilated their songs they would probably file a lawsuit… so don't tell 'em, kay?

………

It was beautiful. The sweeping silver lines, intricate design on the handle, the cool feel of the metal in his hand was to him the best work of art, and the one thing that made him feel strong. Mrs Lovett's chatter did not disturb him at all, until he felt her poke him violently, apparently wanting an answer for something.

"You 'aven't been listening at all,'ave you?" she demanded. He didn't even look up.

"Yes I have."

"Liar." She walked irritably away and he was left in peace again. Why did she care so much anyway? So what if he pretty much ignored her, never looked her in the eye or acknowledged she was there?

_**Well if you wanted honesty that's all you had to say.**_

He guessed if she wasn't here it would be much more difficult for him to dispose of his victims, so it might be a good idea to keep on her good side, but he didn't really see the point. Occasionally, in a moment of alertness, he'd actually notice her presence, but mostly he didn't see her. He didn't want her to leave, though.

**_I never want to let you down or have you go._**

The delight he'd felt in her when she'd come up with the ingenious pie plan had only been temporary, it was easier to block her out.

_**It's better off this way.**_

As he got up from the chair and surveyed the room, he noticed the photograph of Albert, Mrs Lovett's deceased husband. They'd been a most unlikely couple, with his huge bulk next to her slender, slight figure. He felt a slight jolt of surprise as he remembered how much like Lovett he'd been as Benjamin, extroverted and careless, luaghing in photos. Now…

_**For all the dirty looks, the photographs your boyfriend took.**_

She hadn't changed much – back then, she'd always been coming up with crazy ideas that seemed good at the time but turned out disastrous and painful.

_**Remember when you broke your foot from jumping out the second floor?**_

Her personality had been sweet and funny at one time, but now it just annoyed him and resented her for refusing to leave him alone.

_**I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not okay. You wear me out.**_

Her fantasies were ridiculous. Foreign shores and sparkling water enchanted you at first, but after a while the sun would begin to hurt your eyes and the water would ensure you came out shivering. Realism was not one of her virtues.

_**What will it take to show you that it's not the life it seems?**_

She'd often snapped at him for being so gloomy and fixated and his wrongs, and it was easy for her to say that because she'd never been there, had never experienced the horror that had sunk him into depression and silence.

_**I've told you time and time again you sing the words but don't know what it means**_

She'd been talking about dragging him and Toby out sometime, a prospect which he regarded with no small horror; it would involve leaving the haven of his shop and enduring several hours in her company.

_**I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not okay. You wear me out.**_

***

No matter how many times he sank his razor into a customer's hapless neck, he never got tired of the sick thrill he felt. This particular future pie filling served as part of the jury at the Old Bailey, the court that had condemned him, so it was an enjoyable payback as well as murder.

_**Forgot about the dirty looks**_

Sweeney swept the foamy lather across his customer's jaw, calm and serene as he prepared for execution. As he did he caught sight of the photograph of his dear Lucy and baby Johanna, and his stomach twisted. Lucy had been totally against killing in any form, regardless of the justification, and would have been horrified at what her husband had come too.

But the reason why her photograph was so prominent on the table was because she was gone, and he'd never hear what she would have said.

_**The photographs your boyfriend took**_

The rich man sat comfortably back in the chair. Probably dreaming of his girl or the latest conviction at the law court, not paying any attention to the barber behind him. Well, why would he?

_**You said you'd read me like a book, but the pages are all torn and frayed.**_

His razor traced along the man's jaw, before Sweeney pulled it back viciously and sprayed red everywhere.

_**I'm okay, I'm okay! I'm okay now.**_

He laughed as he pressed his foot down on the pedal that would take the man down to Hell. The blood was spotted over his shirt and waistcoat, but it didn't worry him – he was closing now.

It was only in his dingy shop, taking men's lives away, that Sweeney Todd really felt alive. Most of the time he was half-dead and catatonic, but murder seemed to be the cure. This was mostly why he often polished off more customers than was strictly necessary, despite Mrs Lovett's worries about discovery. It wouldn't save him – only one man's death could silence his demons – but it made it easier to face the world.

_**But you really need to listen to me, because I'm telling you the truth – I mean this – I'm okay!**_

………

Song: I'm Not Okay (I Promise)

Haha, that went off in a gristly direction. No wonder I rated this T… No review will result in death by cyanide-laced bangers and mash. Comprenez?


	6. A Wife and Child

Disclaimer: Until I get my hands on the rights, Sweeney Todd belongs to Someone Else (i.e. Burton, Sondheim, and DreamWorks).

2nd Disclaimer: I don't own My Chemical Romance, but I wish I did.

………

"She's gone."

Mrs Lovett had reminded Sweeney of this several times, and he knew it was true, but it didn't seem to him like his Lucy was gone. Maybe after she'd died she'd turned into a ghost and come back to haunt him. If she was, couldn't she at least show her face? He felt angry at his wife for killing herself. It would bloody well serve her right if he forgot about her.

_**I never said I'd lie in wait forever.**_

It wouldn't happen though. She was too big a part of what he was.

Sweeney clenched his fists in anger. Almost without thinking, he brought his razor to his wrist and slashed it across like the way he slit his customer's throats – the latter brought him a few minutes of peace, maybe this would. He watched the bright red liquid flow down his arm with interest; it looked just like the blood of the men he killed.

Did that mean his fate was to be killed?

**_If I died we'd be together._**

His eyes widened in horror as he realised that the blood wasn't stopping, and there seemed to be an awful lot of it coming out. He must have hit a vein.

Sweeney quickly looked around for something to bind the wound, but there was nothing. He strode over to the door. Mrs Lovett would help him – she could stomach the sight of blood unnervingly well, not like Lucy, who would have screamed at the sight.

Why did he think about Lucy all the time?

_**I can't always just forget her, but she could try.**_

Mrs Lovett gave him a long and loud lecture on "messin' around with those goddamn razors of yours", but her work had at least stopped the bleeding. Sweeney Todd couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if he hadn't gone to her for help, and left it to bleed. Maybe he'd've died of blood loss.

They say when you die your life flashes before you. Did that mean he'd see Lucy and Johanna? If so death was a thing to be welcomed with open arms.

**_At the end of the world, or the last thing I see_**

A timid knock came from his door. He looked up to see a blonde teenage girl standing hesitantly outside. His heart jumped with the thought that it might possibly be Johanna, and he pulled open the door.

"Yes?"

"Please sir, do you remember – last week – a man called George Harrison? He's been missing for five days and this was the last place he went."

She wasn't Johanna.

George Harrison? It could have been anyone – he often didn't know their name.

He shook his head. "Sorry." She sniffed and walked down the steps. Sweeney shut the door and flung himself into the barber's chair. It had been stupid to think she was Johanna. Johanna was trapped by the judge, and even if the sailor managed to free her – doubtful – he'd never see her again.

_**You are never coming home, never coming home.**_

It wasn't right. The judge, who had all but stolen her, had her near, and he, Sweeney, her _father_, didn't even know what she looked like.

_**And all the things that you never ever told me, and all the smiles that are ever ever—**_

He looked miserably towards the door, and nearly had a heart attack as he saw someone he thought he'd never see again.

"LUCY!" he screamed… and she disappeared.

The words of Mrs Lovett repeated themselves in his mind: "People think it's 'aunted… and 'oo's to say they're wrong?"

**_Ever get the feeling that you're never all alone? And I remember now._**

Lucy had died far away from him, lost and alone. He wouldn't have even known she'd died if Mrs Lovett hadn't been here.

He wished he could have seen her just once before her death.

**_At the top of my lungs in my arms, she dies. She dies._**

Sweeney tried to conjure up a picture of her in his mind, but all he got was the photograph he'd stare at for hours. Frantically, he tried to turn her into flesh-and-blood pictures, but he couldn't. Sweeney Todd couldn't remember any more his own wife's face.

_**At the end of the world, or the last thing I see**_

His landlady's angry yells alerted him to the news that dinner was ready, and if he didn't come down right now she was… wait… she'd force him to eat an entire batch of her cannibalistic pies. Sweeney shuddered, and descended the steps.

Nellie Lovett was bustling around chaotic and harum-scarum as usual. He wondered if he was doomed to spend the rest of his life in chaos, longing for the calmness and serenity of his dead wife.

**_You are never coming home, never coming home._**

"Where's Toby?" he asked her.

She looked up, slightly rattled. "'E's sufferin' from the effects o' too much to drink," she explained, rolling her sunken eyes. "That boy doesn't know 'ow to 'old 'is drink." She suddenly brightened, as if she had a good idea. "D'you want some?"

He thought for a moment. Alcohol tended to make him do extremely stupid, out of character things, which would be disastrous with Lovett around, but he knew if he drank enough the pain would temporarily disappear.

_**Could I? Should I?**_

He nodded, and she happily poured out some wine into a bent pewter tankard and handed it to him. "Good stuff, this," she said proudly. "None o' the 'orrible stuff I used to get – fit for a—well, maybe not a king, but maybe a—"

"Judge?" He cut her off mid-sentence. She hissed in annoyance. "You bang on about 'im that much, I'm surprised you don't just go on an' bloody marry 'im!"

"He's marrying Johanna," Sweeney reminded her tonelessly. She sighed again, sadly this time.

"Poor girl. She's only… must be sixteen by now…"

"And I've never heard her voice," he muttered into his wine.

_**And all the things that you never ever told me**_

"Must've been pretty to attract that Anthony kid – 'e seemed smitten an' 'e's only seen 'er once!"

"She'd be pretty as her mother," he answered. Fair and pale. Did she smile like Lucy did, on the day he'd been arrested?

And all the smiles that are ever gonna haunt me

She'd been smiling _before_ the police had arrived. Obviously. But happiness hadn't done either of them any good in the end, because she was long turned to dust in some filthy alley, and…

_I have nothing._

_**Never coming home, never coming home.**_

It is one of the great ironies of life that when you most need someone to catch you when you fall, they've wandered off.

_**If I fall. If I fall… down.**_

………

Song: The Ghost of You

It was snowing today! I'm ridiculously excited (I love snow… as you might have guessed) but it hardly ever snows where I live and it looks like Winter Wonderland out there. We got the day off school and went tobogganing, and interviewed by BBC news peeps ^^

On the down side, I would have had this up sooner but I've been really ill for the last week =(

People who review get a muffin of their choice: we have chocolate, arsenic, blueberry…


	7. The Power of Arsenic

Sorry this took a while to write. Why is The Jetset Life so hard to Sweeneyfy?

Disclaimer: Sweeney Todd is… sob sob… not legally mine.

2nd Disclaimer: My friend pointed out I could combine both disclaimers into one. But heaven knows, it's fun. What was the point of this again? Oh yeah – don't own My Chemical Romance, never will.

………

Sometimes, Sweeney wished he didn't have the habit of drinking himself into oblivion every night. But when you thought about it, it was all Mrs Lovett's fault really. She gave him the bloody stuff. He stared gloomily into the glass as if it held all of life's secrets (unlikely).

_**Gaze into her killing jar I'd sometimes stare for hours. **_

"All right, love?" she asked him happily. _Why won't you leave me alone?_ he wanted to wail, but he'd learnt to keep quiet around her.

He smiled up at his landlady. "I'm fine."

She was happy with his reply, and bustled off humming to herself. Sweeney laughed inwardly. _Fool._

_**She bought the last line.**_

Since he'd been living in Fleet Street, Todd and Lovett and reached a silent agreement that she was not to mention anything pre-Australia, and he was to keep silent on her cooking – although the latter was hard, it was no wonder she hardly got any customers. Any time either of them touched on those subjects it escalated into a fight which ended with Sweeney threatening Lovett with one of his razors. It didn't take much of her talk about _before_ for him to lose his temper.

_**I'm just the worst kind of guy to argue with what you might find.**_

Digging up old bones might hurt when he was thinking about it, but it was much worse when she talked about it. She was the one there when Lucy poisoned herself.

***

Lucy gripped the small grimy bottle tightly, rereading the label over and over. It always said the same thing: _Arsenic. _

The apothecary had told her it was useful for treating rheumatism, arthritis and consumption, and if mixed with vinegar and chalk would make her skin lovely and white, but she'd ignored this, remembering what Ben had told her once about a doctor he'd shaved telling him that arsenic was – in his opinion – deadly. It would be perfect for what she had in mind.

_**Lost in the prescription, she's got something else in mind.**_

She looked dreamily at Johanna, who was lying asleep in her crib. Lucy kissed her daughter, whispered goodbye, and then turned to the window.

"I'm coming for you, Ben," she said triumphantly to the wind, then pulled the stopper from the bottle and tipped the contents down her throat.

_**Check into the hotel Bella Muerte.**_

Nellie Lovett entered the room about two hours later, holding a bowl of soup and prepared for the hour or so she usually had to spend persuading Lucy to drink it.

"Sometimes I wonder why I bother," she muttered angrily – she had a sick husband to take care of, she couldn't keep airhead Lucy and little Johanna here for much longer, especially with no rent.

When she opened the door, she dropped the bowl, which smashed on the hard floor, and screamed in horror at the sight of Lucy Barker's crumpled body lying on the floor by the window. Johanna woke up at the commotion and started crying, as Nellie ran over and gripped Lucy's wrist, trying to find the place Ben had shown her where you could feel a beat if they were alive.

She was alive, and came round a few hours later. Nellie recoiled at the sight of her; the poison had made Lucy's eyes red and sparkling.

_**It gives the weak flight, it gives the blind sight**_

"What," she demanded, holding up the bottle she'd found, "were you doin' with this?"

Lucy's eyes flickered. "I'll tell you later, I've got a headache—"

"I don't care," Nellie snarled. "I've done more than enough for you an' Johanna, now you tell me why I found you dead to the world this evenin' holdin' a bottle of arsenic in your 'and."

Lucy just stared at her blankly. "You're a witch," she stated.

Nellie rolled her eyes. "Lucy, playin' dumb isn't 'elpin', you will bloody tell me what you think you were doin' or I'll send for the Beadle!"

Any mention of the Beadle usually sent Lucy into a screaming fit, but she just giggled. "Go on. I don't care."

The arsenic hadn't killed her, but Nellie suspected it had messed with her brain – and Lucy had been verging on the wrong side of sane anyway since Benjamin had been transported.

"I think I will," she hissed. "I'll send for the Beadle an' tell 'im you've gone mad. 'E'll take you away to Bedlam an' you'll be where you belon' an' outta my 'air!"

Lucy only laughed at the threat, but when, in the middle of the night, Bamford actually came to the house with men from the asylum, she had to be dragged away kicking and screaming blue murder.

_**Until the cops come or by last light**_

Not even Bedlam could hold Lucy Barker for long. She escaped with the aid of an attendant at the asylum, who agreed to set her free in return for certain… favours, and from then on lived wild on the streets, growing more and more insane.

_**And for the last night I lie, could I lie next to you?**_

***

Hearing the story about his wife's death had been such a drain on Sweeney he had felt the room spinning around him. Now, thinking about it made him feel sick and weak.

_**Alright, give up, get down. It's just the hardest part of living.**_

Nellie Lovett knew she had omitted a lot of stuff when she told Sweeney Todd of his wife's death – particularly the part where she'd turned out to be alive but mad. She would – quite literally – be dead meat if he ever found out, but the madwoman was barely recognisable as Lucy now, and it was surely not long now till she really did die. Nellie certainly had no idea now she'd survived so long. Still, she was no real danger.

_**Alright, she wants it all to come down this time.**_

***

The beggar formerly known as Lucy stared absently up at a window in Judge Turpin's mansion. Occasionally a pale face would appear there, surrounded by long blonde hair. A young sailor who'd just walked by had asked her who the girl at the window was, and she knew she'd answered him with something, but now she found she had no idea who the blonde teen was, or what her name was. Hardly surprising, as she didn't even know her own name, but a pity.

_**Pull the plug, but I'd like to learn your name.**_

She couldn't remember much of her life that wasn't spent on London streets, but she had a vague feeling she'd had a husband, and a baby. Maybe her husband had died and her baby taken away, and she herself had been thrown onto London's mean streets.

She chuckled to herself. Utter nonsense, but it made a good story.

_**Aw, sugar. Slip into the tragedy, you've spun this chamber dry.**_

………

Song: The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You

Reviews: Yesssssssss…. pretty please?


	8. Johanna's Asylum

I would have had this up yesterday, but the stupid site wouldn't let me log in… Today me and my friend were down at the hardware store where her dad works and we were acting out songs from Sweeney in the storage building. It was very fun dancing with her singing about the history of the world, but my trousers got filthy when I did my Epiphany recital ~_~

By the way, I know I cut out the dialogue in the beginning of this chapter. I can't remember it and I don't have the DVD. Deal.

Disclaimer: Sweeney and family live happily in my house, wreaking havoc and carnage which I have to pay for. However, the management has repeatedly overridden my request that the rights be given to me.

2nd Disclaimer: My Chem own themselves. Please don't tell them I'm mutilating their songs.

………

As Anthony rounded the corner and turned towards Turpin's mansion, he was feeling elated, joyous… take your pick of words. The elation (or joy, or whatever) immediately evaporated when he saw the love of his life being unceremoniously bundled into a waiting carriage outside the house. She was yelling in protest, obviously not happy to be taken away. Anthony ran up to the house, but he was too late; the carriage whirled away down the street and he was running desperately after it.

Anthony could sprint fast when he wanted too, but horses are faster and get out of breath slower. Anthony was gasping for breath, the stabbing pains in his side making it impossible for him to run another step, and the carriage wheeled round a street corner and was lost.

He'd lost Johanna. He could only pray she'd be safe until he found her again.

_**Saints protect her now.**_

He spent what felt like forever wandering London's streets, all day and most of the nights. He saw opium dens, brothels, parties being held in opulent houses, the tiny terraced cottages of the workers of industrialised London, and more beggars, whores, bankers, thieves, lords, and suspicious characters in top hats than he thought was possible in one place. This wasn't even in a very long time. Anything he'd seen anywhere else in the world could be found in London, albeit much the worse for wear.

Finally, he was walking through a street that managed to be dark even when decked with streetlamps, when he looked up to an iron-barred window and saw her. Johanna.

She leaned towards him, her soft blonde hair luminous in the dim light.

He'd found her at last!

His mood was dampened when, after pacing round the building at least twelve times, he saw that there was no way he could get inside. The place was a fortress. It also happened to be an asylum, so his prayer that Johanna would be safe might have gone unanswered.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't for the life of him formulate a plan to get inside the asylum and take Johanna out with him.

Finally Anthony had to admit defeat. Sweeney Todd was the only person who could help him. He stopped a passing flower-girl, got directions for Fleet Street, and headed that way.

_**Come angels of the lord.**_

***

"He has her locked in a madhouse."

Sweeney felt as if he'd been hit in the stomach with a large mallet. The whole rescuing-Johanna plan had seemed so simple when it just involve letting Anthony save her, then taking his daughter and most likely killing Anthony. Now that bastard had to complicate matters by throwing her in an asylum and possibly condemning her as well.

_What if she died? My girl, dead?_

His mind whirred as he paced back and forth furiously, thinking desperately. Then a calm settled over him.

He knew what Anthony had to do.

_**Come angels of the unknown.**_

………

Song: Interlude

You're allowed to do short fics if the song's only three lines long! Oh, and about the "suspicious characters in top hats": I have nothing against top hats, in fact I love them, but Anthony has problems with them O_O

I originally was going to base this around Lucy, then it ended up being on Johanna getting chucked in the madhouse… inconsistency much?

Johanna: That's because I am totally awesome.

Me: Where did you come from? I thought it was your turn to check up on Sweeney…

Johanna: He's gone mental, jumped out of your window and he's threatening to massacre the town.

Me: Oh shit… excuse me please!

Review, bitches. Or I'll be sending the damages bill your way.


	9. Of Massacres and Meat Grinders

Disclaimer: Last time I looked, there were no mentions of English teenage girls having any ownership of Sweeney Todd. One can only dream.

2nd Disclaimer: Do you seriously think I'm Gerard Way?

………

"You should be a poet," was the last thing the man said before he was tipped back and sent down to Hell, as Todd had christened the bakehouse.

He'd replied, "I don't think so," and then calmly slit the man's throat. Well, it had made his victim's neck smile, at least. He hadn't heard much out of the jeweller's mouth.

_**Sister, I'm not much a poet but a criminal.**_

How could the Yorkshireman have known that the last thing he'd know in this life would be the gurgle of his own blood? Well, actually if Sweeney hadn't killed him someone else would, for strangers were never missed in London. You had to be careful.

_**And you never had a chance.**_

She often complained about the mess. The floor of the backhouse was forever having to be cleaned, and Sweeney himself went through at least two shirts each day, the white fabric dyed deep red. She called it "unnecessary", but then she would.

_**Love it, or leave it, you can't understand.**_

The next customer caught him almost by surprise, and he hastily threw on his jacket over the bloodspattered shirt and waistcoat. To his surprise, it was a young woman that entered, with perfect dark ringlets and a rose-pink dress.

"I know a barber usually shave's men's beards, but… I was wondering if you could trim my hair?" she asked hesitantly. Sweeney raised an eyebrow.

"Looks all right to me, madam."

She shook her head. "I have this silly side bit of hair that always looks out of place but I don't want to cut it off myself, so I came to you, would you? I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I've a ball to attend in the evening and I want my hair to be just right!"

_Good Lord, she carries on more than Lovett,_ Sweeney thought in dismay. Still, he politely offered her the barber's chair. Within about a minute he thought he would have a nervous breakdown if he heard her voice any more, so he impulsively slashed across her white neck and dispatched her down with no feeling of remorse.

_**A pretty face but you do so carry on and on and on.**_

With his latest customer lying lifeless on the floor, Sweeney wondered why she'd come to him. If he'd been a silly young woman (thank God he wasn't), he'd have been more attracted by the fancy ensemble that Pirelli and the like had set up, rather than his austere, dingy first-floor establishment.

He didn't want to change it, despite Mrs Lovett's mutterings that it was a horrible, filthy place. It reflected his personality, and what the world had become.

_**I wouldn't front the scene if you paid me.**_

Sweeney gazed out of the large window, drinking in the sight of London in the morning gloom. His eyes scanned the buildings until they came to rest on the Old Bailey.

"You made me what I am today," he hissed vehemently.

_**I'm just the way that the doctor made me.**_

The dreary routine of the day continued much as it always did, with some going free and some providing lunch for Mrs Lovett's hungry patrons.

_**On and on and on and on.**_

One such pie filling had been going to get married next week, so Sweeney had been stupid to kill him, but he'd confirmed as he sat down that his visit was impulsive and no one knew where he was. Shame about the bride though – she'd have probably already made her dress.

_**Love is the red, the rose on your coffin door.**_

He peered down the chute and saw that the man was bleeding an inordinately large amount, and soon he'd be lying in a red pool. He must have dug the razor in deeper than he'd thought.

_**What's life like bleeding on the floor, the floor, the floor?**_

He couldn't leave London, much as he hated it. He remembered something Mrs Lovett once said to him: "You don't leave London. I was born 'ere, I live 'ere an' I'll die all in London."

The city truly was the end of the world. He'd probably made it a lot better by killing all these damned people.

Turpin was here, festering in the filth. And as long as he lived in his opulent mansion, Sweeney stayed in London.

_**You'll never make me leave. I wear this on my sleeve. Give me a reason to believe.**_

For the second time that day, Sweeney glared down at London's populace from his window.

They'd all want to kill him if they knew the truth.

Let them try.

_**So give me all your poison, and give me all your pills.**_

Everyone there had hopes, dreams, most would never happen. He'd had a hand in ending some of those, but he didn't feel at all guilty.

_**And give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill.**_

He suddenly spotted two peelers at the street corner, where Fleet joined with the Strand. They moved urgently through the crowd, probably chasing a pickpocket or petty thief. Even if they caught them, there would always be more.

_**You're running after something that you'll never kill.**_

A gunshot rang out, making Sweeney start. They were getting serious.

_Shoot me if you dare. I'm the one you should be after._

The policemen of London were so very blind.

_**If this is what you want then fire at will.**_

He wondered of what professions the men he'd killed today had been. Carpenter, juror, jeweller, that annoying young woman, priest… he smiled at the latter. Mrs Lovett would adore the chance to finally serve a "little priest". He found priests annoying anyway, yammering on about God-given salvation and the like. The only kind of salvation Sweeney would get damned him in the eyes of the Lord.

_**Preach all you want but who's gonna save me?**_

He absently stroked the edge of his razor. As well as being his family and his Excalibur, they were a source of comfort. How strange, because most people are distinctly _un_comfortable around sharp metal.

_**I keep a gun on the book you gave me.**_

He turned away from the window and went downstairs. Mrs Lovett was clearing up and shooing the last drabble of customers away. She'd had to impose a time restriction, otherwise her patrons would have been here till midnight, it took nearly an hour to clean up and she had to get up at seven as it was. She glanced at the doorway and saw Sweeney standing there.

"Do you need somethin', love?" she asked, shutting the door. Sweeney shook his head.

"Have you been in the bakehouse this evening?" he enquired softly.

Lovett looked puzzled. "No, why?" He smiled. "Show you."

They opened the door on a nightmare of gristly, bloody tools and a pile of dead bodies. Todd strode over to one of them and motioned her to follow.

"Look – you can serve up a little priest," he said, smirking.

She smiled, but her grin vanished when she saw Sweeney's woman victim lying in a heap.

"Where'd _she_ come from?!"

He rolled his eyes. "She wanted her hair trimmed. She was annoying me."

"You're barkin' mad, you are," she muttered, but Sweeney heard her. He had his razor out in a trice and held it against her neck.

"Everything was your idea. Shut up or you'll be joining her." He quite liked threatening Mrs Lovett and pretending she was Turpin.

"I'm not objectin' to nothin', but I thought we agreed to take people 'oo wouldn't be missed."

Sweeney shrugged. "Pirelli wasn't one of those."

"Pirelli was tryin' to blackmail you. Anyway, I'm gonna lock up, Toby might stumble in 'ere."

They both walked up the steps and Mrs Lovett locked the bakehouse up, leaving all the bloodstained evidence behind a heavy iron door.

_**Hallelujah, lock and load.**_

***

Sweeney Todd's arms and back were covered in scars, some from the whip, some self-inflicted, and some from the other convicts in the colony he'd been in. There was a burn mark up his right arm where the tip of a brand iron had been dragged up it. It was his own fault really – he'd asked for it, daring the man to steal a brand iron and burn him. After that, several of them had reckoned it was a test of nerve, and it had been surprisingly popular; God, it had hurt.

Test of nerves? More like a test of stupidity.

**_Black is the kiss, the touch of the serpent son. It ain't the mark or the scar that makes you one, and one, and one, and one._**

He angrily pulled on his fingerless leather gloves and opened the shop door, scanning the overspill area of his partner's pie shop to see if there were any men down there in need of a shave.

Mrs Lovett had told him from overheard chatter that a lot of people found him very peculiar, suddenly appearing in London, renting rooms in her building and public ally challenging Adolfo Pirelli. Apparently a lot of them found him unnerving and hoped he would leave London as abruptly as he came. _Fat chance._

**_You'll never make me leave. I wear this on my sleeve._**

He got the feeling from Nellie Lovett that she would rather this whole business was abandoned, they moved out of London and lived _happily ever after by the fucking sea._ If she didn't like the business, she shouldn't have voiced the idea. He was quite happy slitting throats. It didn't feel like murder to him, more like something he had to do to cleanse London, which sounded ridiculous but true. If Nellie didn't like it, she should have found something else rather than how delicious priest can be to interest him.

**_You wanna follow something – give me a better cause to lead._**

Sweeney was scared that the bloodstains weren't worth it, that after all the sweat and tears it would never be all right, he'd never get the judge, never see Johanna…

J_**ust give me what I need – give me a reason to believe.**_

He had no doubt his hatred would kill him in the end, unless London did for him first.

_**So give me all your poison, and give me all your pills.**_

Everyone down there, eating breakfast below him, seemed so hopeless. Their hearts might stop beating the next day, or even today if he was in a bad mood.

_**And give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill.**_

Sweeney Todd surrounded himself with death, and he knew where his customers would end up, but he had no idea which of the people in this sorry city would be the end of him. It was an interesting predicament.

_**Fire at will.**_

………

Song: Thank You for the Venom (MrsMargeryLovett helpfully reminded me that I missed that first time round)

Holy cow that was a long chapter (for me), running onto 6 pages on Word. Hm, fun.

Reviews: Pretty please with a meat grinder on top.


	10. Shotgun Sinners

Newly cooked news from the madhouse: I made a beta-reader profile, I feel accomplished 8DDDD

This one, like "Helena" at the very beginning, is a little AU, because the beginning is normal-ish but then Sweeney gets sick – which never happened in the movie, but you could read it as a prelude to the "Helena" one.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sweeney Todd, it belongs to the dust monsters from Mars. Wait, that isn't right…

2nd Disclaimer: I love writing two disclaimers and annoying you =) My Chemical Romance's songs belong to Gerard and Mikey's cousin's stepfather's niece's half-brother's therapist. I think.

………

The evening church service was something Mrs Lovett wasn't particularly fond of attending, but she had to keep up regular appearances at church for fear of what people might say, and on this particular occasion she dragged Sweeney along with her, who came under protest.

It was darkening outside, the sky a bruised purple, but the sun hadn't quite set.

_**Wait until it fades to black. Ride into the sunset.**_

As she walked along the cobbled street she heard Sweeney muttering profanities under his breath, and scowled at him.

"It won't be that bad, love," she reassured him, though she knew it would be every bit as bad as he thought.

_**Would I lie to you?**_

He opened his mouth, then thought better of it and shut it.

_**Well I've got something to say.**_

As a tall cloaked man brushed by him in the street, Nellie saw Sweeney's hand flit to his holster where one or more of his friends were always attached, and his head turn to glare at the man walking down Fleet Street.

_**Grab your six-pack from your back, throttle the ignition.**_

Mrs Lovett rolled her eyes. Sweeney had an unstable temper, but she was willing to bet that if she was ever threatened he'd just stand idly by.

_**Would I die for you? Well here's your answer in spades.**_

Sweeney Todd hated going outside for any reason, and since he'd long ceased to believe in God he didn't see any reason why he should be dragged to church. The multitudes of people out amazed him, and for a moment he thought he saw them as demons like in paintings of Hell, grotesque and repulsive.

He shook his head. It was insomnia's fault – the lack of sleep was making him hallucinate. He wouldn't be surprised if he'd seen people's true form, though.

_**Shotgun sinners, wild eyed jokers.**_

Mrs Lovett lost sight of him momentarily in the crowd, but just as he was about to make a desperate bid for freedom she grabbed his arm and pulled him on down the road.

_**Got you in my sights.**_

He noticed as they made their way down the street that there was an alarmingly large proportion of prostitutes lining the road. Sweeney got the shock of his life when what he thought was part of the general muck stirred and revealed itself to be a filthy beggar woman.

_**After all is said and done, climb out from the pine box.**_

She raised her gleaming eyes, spotted him, and grabbed his leg, attempting to make him stop.

"You," she babbled. "I seen you before. You're stayin' where it's 'aunted… stay away!"

Sweeney regarded the woman with a mixture of horror and disgust, then turned to Mrs Lovett, who had gone a pasty colour and looked as if she was going to be sick.

"Who is she?" he asked. "And why is she…" he gestured at her hand, which held his leg in a surprisingly strong grip.

She shrugged shakily. "Why you askin' me?"

He sighed. "Because _she_ is obviously mad."

_**Well I'm asking you, 'cause she's got nothing to say.**_

The beggar woman suddenly released her grip and slumped back, staring vacantly into space. Sweeney leaned forward, curiously.

"Who are you?" She didn't answer, unable to speak.

_**The angels just cut out her tongue. Call her Black Mariah.**_

Mrs Lovett gently pulled him away. "No use talkin' to that one, love. She's crazy as they get, probably don't even know what she's sayin'," she murmured. Although he wanted to investigate further, Sweeney let Mrs Lovett steer him away from the beggar.

_**Would I lie to you? That girl's not right in the brain.**_

The church was awful, pretentious and overblown. The pews were hard wood and unbearably uncomfortable. Restless, Sweeney glanced towards the warbling choir, who only sounded impressive because of the arched ceiling that reverberated their "singing", and wished they'd all drop dead.

_**Mass convulsions strike the choir, by the grace of God.**_

***

"I blame you," he said, glaring at Mrs Lovett.

She scowled. "Exactly 'ow is this _my fault_?"

"If you hadn't dragged me off on that fucking trip to the _fucking church_—"

"You don't get typhoid from bein' outside, love!"

"I told you I had a fucking headache, didn't I? And now I feel even WORSE! Probably got infected from that bloody madwoman…"

She looked murderous. "Can't you anythin' except complain?" she said quietly. "Maybe you're gonna die, but you'll be—" she choked back a sob, "—dead an' in the ground, an' I'll 'ave to live with knowin' all you did before you died was scream at me."

Sweeney fixed her with an angry look – but he wasn't angry with her any more.

"What a way to die," he muttered. "I haven't even done what I wanted to…" He trailed off miserably as he thought of his poor caged Johanna whom he could never save now.

Mrs Lovett patted his arm. "Could be worse. You could be dyin' of cholera."

He shuddered. "My parents died of that. Don't remind me."

She lowered her eyes, and Sweeney saw they glistened with tears. "Jus' don't know what I'm gonna do without you, Mr T."

_**But don't stop if I fall, and don't look back.**_

He wished he could tell her that it would be all right, but they both knew from now on he'd only get worse.

"Live on." He wasn't aware he'd said it out loud, but Nellie's head snapped back towards him. He stared back at her.

She would be all right. She was a survivor, was Nellie Lovett.

_**Oh baby don't stop, bury me and fade to black.**_

***

The sickness worsened as the days dragged on. In the second and third weeks of his illness Sweeney's fever was so bad he was in a constant state of delirium. He felt trapped in a permanent nightmare, but to Nellie he mostly just lay there prostrate, feverish but calm. Occasionally he seemed to surface and became agitated, but she still had a lot of time where she would just sit there, tears rolling silently down her cheeks.

She'd spent a long time thinking about what she was going to do after he was… gone… She could have spent her life mourning him, but she was practical by nature, and also knew Sweeney would want her to carry on – he'd said as much to her.

_**But don't stop if I fall, and don't look back.**_

One day, nearly a month after that awful day at the church, Nellie was staring miserably at Sweeney's flushed face, when suddenly his dark eyes cracked open, and her heart flipped as she dared to hope that he'd recover.

"Nellie?" It was barely more than a whisper, and she leaned forward.

"I'm 'ere love," she murmured back to him.

The ghost of a smile twitched across his lips.

"I'll see you." His eyes gently closed, and he subsided back into the fever. Her heart sank into nothing at that point. He wasn't awake. He never would wake up now.

Sweeney Todd died two hours later, in the middle of a rainy afternoon, and Mrs Lovett gripped his hand like a lifeline to the end, hoping that somehow she could drag him back to her. It didn't work.

She needed to make arrangements for the funeral.

_**Oh baby don't stop, bury me and fade to black.**_

………

Song: Hang 'Em High

Reviews: If you dare!

I spent ages trying to find a disease for him to die of. All the diseases in the Victorian era seemed to be children-only, non-fatal, or icky (hey, I wanted Sweeney to be a beautiful corpse!). But I swear, all the sites I looked on pretty much said: "If you lived in the Victorian era you were going to die of typhoid/TB/smallpox/cholera! 8DDDDDDDDDD Or even all four! 8DDDDDDDDDDD" Scary…

Anyway, loves, I hopses you likeses.


	11. She's Not Dead Yet

As I may have mentioned, pretty much none of these are complete song-fics – i.e. they don't use the whole song, don't use them as accurate lyric sheets or anything… I chopped the beginning off this one so I just thought I'd mention it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sweeney and co.

2nd Disclaimer: Ditto My Chem.

………

Living got harder the older he got. Lucy told him that. It was an unexpectedly gloomy sentiment from someone like her, but he remembered it clearly because it was the first thing she ever said to him.

He was twenty, just starting out on his own, and Lucy's father Roman Montague had asked him to come to his house for his shave. Montague was a well-off man, owner of several mine industries, so Benjamin took care not to offend his patron.

As Montague disappeared to find Benjamin's payment, his beautiful daughter, who had been hovering at the edge of the room, came over and smiled at him. Benjamin had felt his legs turn to jelly as he saw this angel before him.

"Do you ever find it gets harder?" she asked him, her soft voice educated and refined.

He shrugged. "What?" He was painfully aware of his accent, and if it was philosophy she wanted to discuss he was hopeless – the school he went too taught him to read, write, and add, but not much else.

"Living."

_**Do you remember that day when we met you told me this gets harder? Well it did.**_

His lip curled as he remembered the hopelessly-in-love young man he'd been – full of so many ideas, laughter, love… Lately it was all he could do just to hold himself together.

_**Been holding on forever.**_

That, along with so many others which he listed every day, was another of the reasons he needed to kill Turpin – he owed it to Ben and Lucy. They were good people. Especially Lucy.

_**Promise me that when I'm gone you'll kill my enemies.**_

***

Unknown to Sweeney Todd, someone else was also turning over their memories of Lucy Montague, but in a less happy light.

Nellie Lovett had been twenty-one when _she_ met Lucy, and jealousy had instantly flared up in her. Not only was she impossibly beautiful and fair, she had the nicest person possible for a husband. Albert was a nice man, and she did love him, but compared to Benjamin Barker he paled.

When Benjamin came back and found her, she thought her crazy dreams back before transportation might come true – Lucy was long gone, he'd fall in love with her. His obsession with Lucy couldn't last forever.

_**The damage you've inflicted, temporary wounds.**_

But even thought she was gone, her ghost lingered everywhere, and Nellie had to watch her every word in case Sweeney found out what really happened to her.

_**I'm coming back from the dead, and I'll take you home with me.**_

Whatever she tried to do for him was constantly compared. Everything she did was insignificant compared to dear bloody Lucy.

_**I'm taking back the life you stole.**_

***

Sweeney had to admit it, he was terrified of Mrs Lovett. Not so much the woman herself, but what she stood for. She was trying to make him forget Lucy, which was impossible. Sometimes he wished he could, or was angry with her for leaving him, but he didn't want to replace her with Nellie Lovett. No no no. Bad idea, very bad. Anyway, it would never be.

We never got that far. This helps me to think all through the night.

It was the middle of the day, but still the sky had a dark aura. It was never bright in London, and he thought maybe if it ever was, he'd know just what he was doing here.

_**Bright lights that won't kill me now, or tell me how.**_

***

Fate is a cruel mistress. When Lucy had had Ben, he'd loved her with all his heart, and it hadn't been trampled on then.

Sweeney didn't love her, however much she tried to fool herself that he did, and his heart was lost somewhere neither of them knew how to get to.

_**Just you and I, your starless eyes remain.**_

She could at least count as his favourite (live) person. She took care of him, and sometimes he'd even open up and talk to her. Only a little, but enough to give her hope.

But then… then his eyes would darken with anger, and he'd order her out, a murderous edge to his voice.

Hip hip hooray for me, you talk to me, but would you kill me in my sleep?

He came slowly, despondently down the stairs, barely glancing at her. He could be a zombie and she probably wouldn't have noticed.

_**Lay still like the dead.**_

But when it came down to it, she thought, Lucy was wrong for Sweeney as he was now. She'd been perfect for the happy, whole Ben, but now the bloodshed had begun. Lucy hated blood.

Nellie didn't mind.

_**From the razor to the rosary, we could lose ourselves and paint these walls in pitchfork red.**_

He wouldn't rest. Nellie heard him, walking up and down his shop. She knew he was insomniac, sleeping only about an hour to an hour and a half per night. She also knew he wouldn't sleep properly till he killed the Judge and half of London along the way.

_**I will avenge my ghost with every breath I take.**_

"Alms, alms, for a miserable woman…"

Nellie nearly had a heart attack as she heard the voice. Running over to the door, she shooed the madwoman out, who thankfully went without too much protest, and warily relaxed, heart hammering.

Would she always have to live in fear that Lucy would turn up to wreck her dreams?

**_I'm coming back from the dead and I'll take you home with me._**

Facsimile. That's what Nellie was – to Sweeney anyway. A hopeless copy who could never take his darling's place.

_**I'm taking back the life you stole.**_

She thought death would be enough to stop Lucy. But she wouldn't stay buried. Whatever she said to Sweeney about her being gone, he didn't listen. One slip, and her carefully-crafted lie would fall to pieces.

**_This hole you put me in wasn't deep enough, and I'm climbing out right now._**

If even their own home wasn't safe from her, what was?

_**You're running out of places to hide from me.**_

Even in death – or as close as that woman was veer going to come to it; Nellie thought that nothing short of plague could do away with Lucy Barker – she haunted them. Sweeney didn't know she was alive, but Nellie knew when he died his last thought would be of Lucy. Not her.

Nellie would remember her barber for ever. She would, whereas precious Miss Lucy had forgotten, her mind a filthy puddle where nothing good ever rose to the surface.

_**When you go, just know that I will remember you.**_

***

If he fell, he'd see her. Wasn't that what she thought? Lucy had believed in Heaven, redemption, and everything good and Christian. She'd said to him herself living got harder, so when it was too much to bear, it stood to reason he'd die and meet her…

On second thoughts, that didn't sound quite right. He'd never really comprehended the idea of Heaven, and how far God was prepared to forgive. He was just bone-weary.

_**If living was the hardest part, we'll then one day be together.**_

Everyone has a time to die, nothing lasts. This massacre of revenge he and Mrs Lovett had instigated would end, and he had a strange feeling that he'd die with it. Maybe Lovett would too.

_**And in the end we'll fall apart, just like the leaves changing colours.**_

But he'd never had a chance for goodbye. He owed her that.

_**And I will be with you. I will be there one last time now.**_

Slowly, he closed his eyes and drew up a picture of her. To his annoyance, it was hazy and indistinct. He couldn't fill in all the details.

Sweeney shook his head violently. Whatever he recalled of her face, it was the imprint she herself had left on his life that mattered.

_**When you go, just know that I will remember you.**_

He caressed the photographic image of her face. If death meant seeing her one last time, he wasn't afraid of it. Not any more.

_**I've lost my fear of falling… I will be with you. I will be with you.**_

………

Song: It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish

Reviews: Yes. Just yes.

On a slightly off-topic note, what's everyone's favourite song from each album? Mine are "Early Sunsets Over Monroeville" (Bullets), "Cemetary Drive" (Three Cheers and due for Sweeneyfication next!) and "Welcome to the Black Parade" (The Black Parade). Give your opinions loves ^_^


	12. Back Home, Off the Run

Today at school I was helping my friend with her music homework (a band profile on MCR) and these girls were watching, and they said My Chemical Romance was crap goth music and they didn't see how anyone could like it! Waaah… But I've been looking forward to writing this chapter coz the song is one of my favourites =)

By the way, does anyone know how you type those breaks that give you one continuous line across the page? I don't know how to do it!

Disclaimer: Sweeney and co belong to the usual suspects.

2nd Disclaimer: My Chemical Romance don't belong to me, but I'll try to change that. It would make my life.

………

The _Bountiful_ drew through the enveloping fog into port like a ghost ship, looming over the dark streets of London. Sweeney Todd kept his dark eyes fixed on the first sight of his former home, staring intensely into the gas-lit city.

When the ship finally anchored, he strode quickly off the ship with the gaggle of sailors. After a brief talk with Anthony, he steeled himself and set off through the damp, dark alleyways. He felt like he was in a ghost town. The lamp-lit London of the night was so different from the last time he'd been here.

He was returning to a different city, like a ghost who comes back to its place of murder after many years.

_**This night walk the dead, in a solitary style**_

After walking for what felt like miles, he finally entered Fleet Street and saw his home looming uninvitingly before him. Even that had changed – there was now a large sign across the front proclaiming "Mrs Lovett's meat pies". He assumed that meant she was living alone, so Albert must be dead – there'd been no need for her to work while he was alive.

Steeling himself for what he hoped to find inside, he opened the dirty door and stepped inside the shop.

_**And crash the cemetery gates,**_

***

He saw it all as Nellie described it to him. His darling staying up on their floor, the judge standing below the building, holding up a bouquet… Lucy being hurried to her house by the Beadle… what happened there – oh God.

The party was where his mind provided the most detail. Guests in opulent clothes and grotesque, surreal masks, and Lucy in the middle of them, hysterical with fear.

What had she been wearing when that bastard had had his way with her?

_**In the dress your husband hates.**_

"It's Todd now. Sweeney Todd. And he will have his revenge," he told her. Revenge for what _he_ did to Lucy and all the other sorry souls. She'd have no grave – if what Mrs Lovett said was true Lucy's death was suicide, and the church wouldn't allow her to be buried. A headstone and place in a churchyard was not where Lucy Barker would be found.

_**Way down, mark the grave.**_

Mrs Lovett poured him another glass of gin.

"'Ere you go, love," she murmured. "Need a good strong drink, you do."

He felt guilty sitting there in her parlour drinking gin after hearing about Lucy's death. It didn't seem right.

_**Where the searchlights find us drinking by the mausoleum floor.**_

_Where did they find her after she died?_ he wondered. _Where did she breathe last?_

_**And they found you on the bathroom floor.**_

The knowledge that he wasn't going to find her up there hit him like a lightning bolt, and did almost as much damage internally.

She was dead. All those years of misery and toil and been for fucking nothing.

_**I miss you, I miss you so far.**_

The last time she'd kissed him had been just before the ship had set sail for Devil's Island. She'd whispered, "Stay alive for me," and then kissed him hard. But the imprint had faded, like her.

_**And the collision of your kiss, that made it so hard.**_

Nellie stood casually in the middle of the room, looking at him standing outside on the step. He sighed, and crossed the threshold of his home for the first time in fifteen years.

It was awful. The wallpaper was mouldy and peeling off the walls, the light was a dim grey at best, and all the furniture was gone. He did see Johanna's cradle though, hidden by the wall, and he gently lifted off the threadbare cloth to see what was underneath.

The doll he'd been interesting her in, the day he was arrested. Dirty, broken and abandoned in the cradle.

He dropped the cloth.

_Well, I'm back._

_**Back home, off the run.**_

***

"Missed a lot, you 'ave – well obviously, you've been gone 'eaven knows 'ow many years – but it would've broken your 'eart to see 'er – a total wreck, she was, poor thing. Started singing a lot after that." Mrs Lovett frowned. "Old ballads an' such, all sad an' usually endin' in ev'ryone getting' killed. Didn't 'elp, I can tell you."

_**Singing songs that make you slit your wrists.**_

He just couldn't stop thinking that she'd killed herself. He'd gone through so much for her, and come back to an empty home. There had been several times when he didn't think he could carry on, and when the overseer had threatened to shoot him once he almost gave in if it meant escaping this hell.

_**It isn't that much fun staring down a loaded gun.**_

But he'd carried on. For her. For nothing.

If he couldn't have Lucy, he'd make the judge and the Beadle pay for what they did to her. It would be a difficult process of lies and deceit that might well kill him in the process, but he had to. And he couldn't stop till they were dead.

_**So I won't stop dying, won't stop lying (are you there at all?)**_

The grief he felt was tinged with hatred for her – she'd died and left him alone. But if she wanted he'd still show he loved her. Even if she didn't know anything where she was; dead and in the ground.

_**If you want I'll keep on crying (do you care at all?)**_

Nellie laid a hand on his shoulder. It felt a dead weight there, but the gesture was meant as a comfort.

"Least she's somewhere better now," she said kindly.

But was she? Suicide victims went to hell, or at least that was what a vicar had told him a long time ago, but he couldn't believe gentle, kind Lucy would burn in that place.

So where was she?

_**Did you get what you deserve?(are you there at all?)**_

Why had she wanted him at all, then?

_**Is this what you always want me for?**_

He missed her unbearably, but that wasn't enough for her. Maybe it never had been.

_**I miss you, I miss you so far.**_

Not enough to keep her alive when he wasn't there with her.

_**And the collision of your kiss, that made it so hard.**_

And Johanna? She was far away, too far for him to reach.

Everything had gone.

_**Way down, way down.**_

The ache he felt for Lucy was different for what he felt about Johanna – he'd missed all her growing up. She didn't even know he existed to miss.

_**When will I miss you, when will I miss you so far.**_

He sat there in Mrs Lovett's parlour all through the night, wishing. Wishing for Lucy to not have been so upset when he left – her misery had made it harder.

_**And the collision of your kiss, that made it so hard. Made it so hard.**_

In the morning, he was ready to face this new, diseased London. Now it was time for plotting revenge, so Lucy could rest in peace.

_**Way down…**_

………

Song: Cemetery Drive

Reviews: Yuppity yup – give them to me.

We broke up from school yesterday! BWAHAHA!


	13. Final Body Count

It's the last chapter. Bring out the champagne! I love you… all you little people, and I'm sorry it took nearly three weeks to upload this. I have my reasons - holiday, uninspired, blah.

I'm putting all the details and pernickety stuff at the beginning so I don't ruin the end of the chapter with my random thoughts. Ah, life… Hey, the person who spots the "Skylines and Turnstiles" reference in this chapter gets the last of the arsenic cookies!

Song: I Never Told You What I Do for a Living

Reviews: To the end!

Disclaimer: Don't own Sweeney, but I finally got my mitts on the two-disc DVD! As I told Toph94, I regularly hug it and tell it it's mine.

2nd Disclaimer: If I owned MCR, would I be thinking up ways to adultnap them?

………

As Sweeney held the double-pictured photograph frame in his hands, he looked miserably at the streaks of blood from his fingers that marred the photograph. He'd ruined it. He should have left it alone.

_**Stay out of the light, or the photograph that I gave you.**_

He placed it back on the table, a familiar feeling of misery rising to the surface. He'd been grieving for Lucy for almost as long as Johanna had been alive, but he'd always had hope that he'd come back to London and find her again. Now he knew he never could, never ever.

God didn't exist, despite what everyone said. If he did Turpin and the scum of the earth wouldn't be alive, and his darling would be.

_**You can say a prayer if you need to, or just get in line and I'll grieve you.**_

It wouldn't be long now. Turpin had evaded him before, but his idea was fully-formed and he knew this time it would work. The Judge would die. He wasn't going to make that mistake again. He'd make sure that idiot Anthony wouldn't burst in at the worst moment; Turpin would die alone.

_**Can I meet you alone? Another night and I'll see you.**_

"It won't be long, my love," he murmured to the photo. "I'll kill our murderer."

_**Another night and I'll be you.**_

He thanked – well, he would have thanked God if he'd believed – whatever was up there that Turpin hadn't recognised him. He kept his head down so that no one would see his features too clearly. Although it was unlikely that someone would see Benjamin Barker in his haggard face, but he didn't want to take the chance.

_**Some other way to continue. To hide my face.**_

***

Sweeney held his razor high, silhouetted against the bloody sky, before slashing it across his victim's throat. He'd sank it in more than usual, and the blood arced in a spray of red, splattering him. He shrugged and stepped on the lever.

Rather than cleaning himself up, he wiped the bloody razor on his shirt. The blood looked beautiful on the cold silver, but Sweeney wanted it clean.

_**Another knife in my hands.**_

A glimmer flashed in the corner of his eye – the broken mirror. He thoughtfully went over and examined his reflection.

He looked like a demon out of hell. His sunken, haunted eyes looked huge in his ashen face, his black hair hung in wild snarls around it, and to add to this unsavoury image bright blood was stained all over him. Sweeney put a hand to his blood-stained face, which felt… _dirty_. The sight of blood hadn't bothered him before, but now it disgusted him.

_**A stain that never comes off the sheets. Clean me off.**_

He didn't know how he'd ever get it off. Oh, he knew Mrs Lovett methodically washed all his filthy clothing, but the blood still stayed. Somehow.

_**I'm so dirty, babe. The kind of dirty where the water never cleans off the clothes.**_

How many people had toppled down the chute to Lovett's hellish bakehouse? He didn't really remember. After a while he'd stopped counting, either how many or who they were. They'd all ended up pie filling anyway.

_**I keep a book of the names and those only go so far 'til you bury them.**_

How the mighty had fallen – from the perfect lives to being eaten with ale. How he and Mrs Lovett had fallen.

_**So deep and down we go.**_

A thought suddenly flashed into his mind as he stood there in front of the cracked glass, bloodstained and silent. If Lucy had been alive, would she have wanted him? He'd changed, and he knew any chance of redemption had passed several bodies ago.

_**Touched by angels, though I fall out of grace.**_

He couldn't erase the men he'd killed, or deny the feeling of exhilaration he got when he took another life. She'd have hated that.

_**I did it all so maybe I'd live this every day.**_

He sharply came to his senses. If he was to get through to the end, he couldn't stand around covered in blood. Sweeney quickly flipped the sign hanging inside the door to 'Closed', and went to clean himself and change clothes.

***

He ran his thumb possessively along the blade of his razor as he prepared another man for a shave. They were all he had now.

_**Another knife in my hands.**_

He decided to let this one go. The man had been chatting to him about his family, making the old ache spring up in Sweeney's heart – if he still had one that was left – and he still felt deeply, even with no sign of blood on him, unclean. Everything in the building was stained with blood.

_**A stain that never comes off the sheets.**_

The satisfied man walked out of Sweeney's shop, and he heard the man's wife's melodic voice. She sounded as happy as Lucy had.

No one in London would be _happy_ if they knew what was really happening in 186 Fleet Street, and that the skilled barber had the heart of a killer.

_**Clean me off. I'm so dirty, babe.**_

During a long lull, Sweeney tried to remember what he'd wanted at the beginning of his affair with revenge.

Avenge Lucy – soon, very soon.

Avenge himself – partly done, but the best was yet to walk in.

Kill the filth and scum that dared to walk this earth – yes, he'd done that rather well.

But there was another reason he'd started killing people. Simply, it made him feel alive.

_**It ain't the money and it sure as hell ain't just for the fame. It's for the bodies I claim and lose.**_

***

"_BENJAMIN BARKER!"_ Sweeney screamed as he finally, finally stabbed the man who had wrecked his life. The blood spurted everywhere, more than it ever had, spraying over Sweeney's face and torso, and still he kept stabbing, unable to stop.

As he stepped away, unable to believe that the deed was actually done, the Judge's disbelieving face stared at him. He wasn't dead, so again Sweeney's razor found his mark, and the bright liquid splattered across the shop, even staining the windows.

He stepped on the pedal mechanically. Turpin slid down to the bakehouse. It was over.

_**Only go so far 'til you bury them.**_

His razors would only have to taste the blood of one more person, before they'd stay silver for ever.

"_Rest now my friends. Rest now for ever. Sleep __now the untroubled sleep of the angels…"_

He knelt there, all purpose gone. He felt hollow inside, like all his feeling and anger had evaporated now Turpin was dead.

Only when he heard a creak from the chest in the corner did he move.

_**So deep and down we go.**_

***

The burning light from the large industrial oven cast its glow on the dead beggar woman. The beggar woman whom now he looked properly looked distinctly _familiar_…

It was… no, it couldn't be. It was Lucy Barker, not dead of poisoning at all but fallen down to the status of a beggar and raving mad besides.

_My love, you're here. You were in front of me all along but now you're dead. I killed you!_

And she had known. What were the last words she said to him?

"'Don't I know you,' she said," he whispered. Why, why had he been so blind?

_**Down… and down we go…**_

He looked up at Mrs Lovett, who looked on the verge of tears. _"She poison's 'erself."_ He'd heard those words from her the day he arrived in London. But Nellie had been with Lucy all along, she'd _known_ Lucy lived. How could she do this to him?

"You knew she lived," he continued. She babbled out her excuses, but all he could hear was his own voice, bemoaning his wife's death.

"_What have I done?"_

_**And down we go… And down we go… And we all fall down!**_

There was only one thing he could do: kill Mrs Lovett for lying to him and making him sell his soul when his darling was still there.

_**I tried, I tried.**_

"_Mrs Lovett, you're a bloody wonder," _he snarled, walking towards her. _"Eminently practical and yet appropriate as always. As you've said repeatedly there's little point in dwelling on the past…"_ The lies spilled easily out of Sweeney's mouth as he ensnared his foolish partner into believing him. He started dancing with her, spinning around the bakehouse. It would be their last dance.

_**And we'll all dance alone, to the tune of your death.**_

As they approached the roaring oven, he had a momentary flash of doubt. But what else was there to be done? He'd promised himself to avenge Lucy's death, so Nellie had to go. Besides, she'd hurt him more than he'd thought possible. Little liar.

_I'll see you in hell,_ he projected towards her, as he threw her into her own oven.

_**We'll love again, we'll laugh again, and it's better off this way.**_

Sweeney ignored her screams. He watched her flailing body for a few seconds, then resolutely closed the heavy door and watched through the peephole as she died.

_**And never again, and never again. They gave us two shots to the back of the head.**_

He knelt on the cold stone floor, hugging his wife to him and bent over her body. The guilt was overwhelming, but he wasn't as miserable about her death as when he'd heard what he believed to be the truth from Nellie Lovett. He'd mourned her as dead for months, and now he'd killed her, but the grieving had already been done.

_**And we're all dead now.**_

It was quiet, so he heard the cover lift off the sewer entrance, and heard the boy climb out. Toby's footsteps drew near as Sweeney sang brokenly. He wanted to die.

The slight ching as Toby picked up the razor didn't go unnoticed. Calm at last, Sweeney tilted his head back slightly to allow the boy to cut his throat.

The death slice came. His faithful friend bit into his throat, the blood running down his neck and dying it plain red.

_**Well never again, and never again. They gave us two shots to the back of the head and we're all dead now.**_

Sweeney was aware of a searing pain as his head fell forward, his blood dripping on Lucy's dirty face. If she had come any other night, he might have let her live long enough for him to realise who he really was.

_Why why why?_

_**Well I tried. One more night, one more night.**_

Sweeney was dying, and not terribly slowly either, but it only came as relief, and as he had been planning on killing himself anyway he didn't mind. He was glad it was over.

_**Well I'm laughin' out, cryin' out, laughin' out loud.**_

He'd failed in so many things – killing the Judge the first time, seeing his daughter, saving Lucy… but he'd done all he could.

_**I tried. I tried. I tried, well.**_

An afterlife – whatever it was – was less than a minute, if that, away.

_**And we'll laugh again, we'll love again.**_

He hoped Nellie had liked her final waltz, despite everything…

_**We'll cry again, and we'll dance again.**_

There was nothing left to do. There wouldn't have been any other way than to die and hope his work had not been in vain.

_**And it's better off this way, so much better off this way.**_

Sweeney was a murderer, and he was dying a murderer. The blood followed him to the grave, and he'd never, ever clean it off.

_**I can't clean the blood off the sheets in my bed!**_

_Lucy, forgive me. I didn't mean to kill you—_

_**And never again,**_

_—everything she told me was a lie—_

_**And never again,**_

_—we all have to fall, I fell deeper than most—_

_**T****hey gave us two shots to the back of the head**_

_—I'm sorry for everything—_

_**And we're**_

_—I love you to the end—_

_**All**_

_—I wish it didn't have to be this way—_

_**Dead**_

_—don't hate me too much—_

_**Now.**_


End file.
